Silence Beckons to Us First Thing

Silence beckons to us first thing,
ascending in the pre-dawn mist
on the call of animals
that can sense day is coming.

We wait until we feel the invitation
to approach first light
with the prayers we have kept for the earth.

We drift each benediction into sky,
out of reach of gravity.

Our prayers spread out over the
circumnavigating planet
and enfold the people waiting
for answers from the firmament.

Our prayers swirl out of the Milky Way
and head on through stars into heavenly realms,
as incense carried through angel's feathers
and inhaled into God's very nostrils.

Each star pales and then we cannot see the stars
anymore, but that doesn't mean they are not there.

We come upon the sun as our planet turns
by degree into the movements of a day.

The moon hugs the earth with swivelled bliss,
and lingers over the horizon.

Our souls reach far beyond the confines of our bodies
into the places banquet feasts are thrown
for the ones that have gone ahead.

Spirit mentions each of us by name
in a language meant for the time
Babel crumbles into dust and we are able
to look at each other, and finally understand.

Jenneth Graser

Photography Fernando Pereira Unsplash

Search for the Anchor

A woman behind her guitar
strums the void with sound,
but has not found peace to still
the old voices that taunt her
when the curtains are closed.

A man lifts his beautiful heart -
though his voice is lost
in the microphone, his spirit offers
an uncaged bird
and so he sings what we cannot hear,
with our ears alone.

There are people carried on the swell of chairs
as they search for the anchor.
There is belief, a variety
that pulses for union,
for answers of the greater kind,
for an answer of any kind.

Follow him then on the sidewalk
and look him in the eyes.
Provide a place of movement
or a seat on the voyage of doldrums.

We will fan our faces
in salt-tasting air
and swim where water fathoms deep
looks but a breath away.

Jenneth Graser

Photography - David Doubilet

Neighbours

He took the leprous and unsightly hands
of a woman kicked to the outskirts.

He took them in his own and pressed every doubt
out of mind with one word, Clean.

He saw hope where there was no
rightful reason for hope to be and yet,

I will come to your house.
I will eat with you.

With a calling forth, his words
brought life where there was none.

He takes my breath into a place air is sweet
and gives me space inside my chest
to take in beauty beyond the pain of it.

My womanly being is welcomed where
perfume breaks open on moments like these.

Every soul is seen with eyes that see,
without constraints or definitions narrow.

Love has shaped every person born.
We are all neighbours.

Jenneth Graser

#write31days
Day 18 Prompt - neighbours

Artist - Nicole Roggeman